Articles

This article – co-authored with articling student Guillaume Letendre – is a modified version of a case comment initially published by Éditions Yvon Blais in July 2018 (EYB2018REP2507).
In Quebec, the burden of proof that must be met in order to obtain authorization to institute a class action is recognized as being not very onerous, as this stage is intended to be a filtering mechanism to eliminate only frivolous claims or those obviously doomed to fail.

This article is a modified version of an article published in French by Éditions Yvon Blais in May 2018 (EYB2018REP2471).
The common interest privilege can be a useful ally in litigation proceedings or a complex commercial transaction. As its name indicates, it is intended to protect the confidentiality of information exchanged between parties who share a common interest. It can be raised when a person sends a document covered by another privilege to a person with whom the sender has a common interest. Thus, the document in question must initially be covered by either the litigation privilege or professional secrecy in order for the common interest privilege to apply.

Since its adoption in April 2016, the European Union’s (“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) has been a hot topic, particularly because of its broad scope and the heavy fines for contravening it. Nearly two months after coming into force, and despite the numerous articles written about it, the GDPR is unfortunately still poorly understood and has given rise to many questions. It is shrouded with many persistent myths (five of which will be dealt with below) that must be dispelled to allow Canadian enterprises and organizations that may be subject to it to set about complying with it.

On November 15, 2017, the Act mainly to modernize rules relating to consumer credit and to regulate debt settlement service contracts, high-cost credit contracts and loyalty program (the “Act”) was sanctioned, bringing numerous changes to the Consumer Protection Act (the “CPA”).

The duties and obligations of directors are at the heart of sound corporate governance. A great deal has been written over the years about how they apply in practice, and their guiding principles have been established and revisited in several major judgments. The leading decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada in Peoples and BCE among others are excellent guides on the directors’ duty of care and diligence (“duty of care”) and the duty of loyalty, which are provided for in the Canada Business Corporations Act Quebec’s Business Corporations Act, and the Civil Code of Québec. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of these concepts and how they are applied It will also canvass a few examples of statutory obligations that directors should be aware of, as in certain cases their civil or even criminal liability may be presumed.